Jewelry

Amazing! Another one of those lariat necklaces I made has sold!

I can NOT believe this. The shop that took it on consignment found someone to buy the thing sometime in the last week or so. Actually, it was my favorite production and I figured when (“if” was not in my calculations) it came back to me, I would just keep it for myself.

At this point, every one of the pieces I’ve made has been purchased: several lariat necklaces and a cool lanyard for a state worker who has to carry her ID card every place she goes.

It just astonishes me that people would want to buy something I made. As much as I’ve wished I could find a way to make a living with some small craft, that I could actually create things people would covet never seemed…well, likely.

Unfortunately my friend who owns the gift and repurposing shop has decided to close. The site was not the best of all possible choices: in an old, quaint house on a main drag, practically invisible to passers-by (it took me three tries to find the place) and devoid of foot traffic. People come to the area for restaurants, but restaurant-goers are rarely there to shop for quirky, environmentally friendly gifts.

Right next door to my friend’s shop is another little shop in the same kind of antique house. Its proprietor carries some exceptionally pretty items, including some truly beautiful vintage jewelry, pretty china and gifts — a mix of old and new. She said she also may close, for the same reason — not enough traffic — but in her case, she’s doing quite well with online sales. Her Etsy shop has a steady trade, and she lives a long way from the brick-and-mortar shop’s gentrified central-city location. She’s open only on the weekends now.

I think I’ll go by there next Saturday and ask if she would tutor me in marketing from Etsy. Three of my other friends are making art (in one case, very nice art, indeed) and crafts. If several of us banded together to stock an Etsy shop, we might have a shot at making it work for us. The proprietor in question observed that the trick with Etsy is to make a lot of things available.

Heh. To do that, I’ll be reduced to making some more of these doodads.

Last night I started on a new one, which I think has some promise. The other day I saw a woman wearing a necklace that incorporated some rectangular mother-of-pearl beads, sort of like these…

…only thinner, more consistent in size and shape, and rather prettier in color. And lo! I realized I just happened to have a handful of those very things.

The half-finished piece, for which I still need to buy a lobster clasp, combines the mother-of-pearl with pearls, garnet, and pink rhodonite. It’s turning out kind of neat…so far, I like it.

I never know how these things are going to look until the beads are actually strung to form a coherent design. Sometimes once they’re on a wire I end up taking them apart and reordering the gems; sometimes the pieces look even better strung together than they do in the design stage.

This one is looking pretty good. The combination of the silvery-iridescent mother of pearl with the rose pink rhodonite, the deep wine-colored garnet, and the creamy white pearl is really very subtle and interesting. It doesn’t jump out and whap you in the face — it’s quietly classy.

IMHO.

At any rate, this one will not be a lariat. The mother-of-pearl rectangles are a little large to make for easy looping or tying, so I decided to make it into a more ordinary, latch-it-together necklace. It may actually be long enough to slide over one’s head, but if a woman has a hairstyle she doesn’t want to mess up, she probably will appreciate a clasp.

I may design it so she could wear it with the clasp either in front or in back. One of the several things I’ve learned about designing bead necklaces is that if you put something near the clasp that has some weight, it will keep the thing from scootching around — the weight will hold the clasp at the back of the wearer’s neck. If that weighted design element were pretty enough, she could choose to display it in front instead of having it hidden behind her. On the other hand, if she wore a collarless shirt or dress, the embellishment I have in mind would look highly decorative in back, too.

A wildly popular farmer’s market has taken up residence on the grounds of a nearby church — they hold forth on Saturdays through the fall, winter, and spring. If I could make about a dozen of these and then get one or two friends to throw in with me, I’m thinking we could rent a table there starting a week before Thanksgiving and keep it right up until Christmas. Betcha we could sell a bunch of loot then. And maybe we could also put our stuff together in a single Etsy shop. It’s a thought, anyway.

Helluva lot better than workin’…

😉

Well, it’s not an “app” in the conventional sense of the word, but a nifty application of the bead lariat necklace. A friend at choir admired one of the beaded lariats I’ve been making. Then she said, “I have to wear a lanyard with my ID card all the time at work–the doors are locked and the card is the only way we can get in and out of our offices, even to go to the bathroom. And it’s so hard to find a lanyard that’s not just hideous. Do you think you can make one of these as a lanyard?”

Why, shore, said I. And forthwith I set out to make one.

The tricky part was coming up with a jump ring that would be sturdy enough to hold the heavy metal clip for the plastic key/ID card. Ultimately I used a small key ring — you know, those fingernail-snapping circles that you have to prize open to slide  your keys on. I’d already broken my thumbnail off below the quick, so ended up traipsing to the bead shop, where they have a tool that opens that kind of jump ring, and lo! It worked. With some effort and four hands in the mix, the saleslady and I managed to attach it to the card clip.

Here’s how it turned out:

As usual, click on the image to see it in higher resolution. Attached a draft business card (the website’s not up yet) just to see how it would look with an ID card hanging on it. Not bad, eh?

Because it would be a nuisance to have to be tying and untying a length of beads bearing a required plastic card, I made it as a closed necklace rather than as a lariat, but finished off the closure with charms and bead bangles in a manner similar to the lariat’s. Don’t you love that little dragonfly?

Is that or is that not a huge improvement over an ugly nylon band stamped “Arizona Gaming Commission”? My friend loved it, and so did her coworkers: looks like I’ll probably get another order or two from them.

Really, this is perfect for anyone who has to wear a card around their neck on the job.

I can imagine making them for men, too, only out of leather or leatheroid cording: hold the beads, hold the frou-frou charms. Maybe instead of a silver dragonfly, a gent would like a fly fishing lure.

Actually, with the key ring doubling as a heavy-duty jump ring, a man could clip any number of small items to the thing: tiny flashlight, random keys, St. Christopher’s medal, whistle for his huntin’ dog, whatever.

I’m working on a new lariat for La Maya. Meanwhile, check out these cool things another choir friend gave me:

He works in glass, and he hand-makes these glass hearts, which can be done in just about any color you can imagine. The ones above are pink, red, amethyst, and “opal.” Are they cute or not? Perfect for Valentine’s day!

If you’d like a bead lanyard or lariat necklace — perfect Christmas present! — get in touch: funnyaboutmoney{at}gmail{dot}com.

Just came across a gemstone called iolite, a variety of cordierite. It’s quite a pretty stone. And lo! We’re told it’s just the thing for the frugal personal financier to sling around her neck (or, if he’s a he, possibly to wear in a ring or tie clip…do men still wear tie clips???). It says here that iolite is “an excellent source of energy when used for the elimination of debt and the responsible management of money.”

Not only that, but it appears to be made for personal finance bloggers, “activating the visionary, creative side of the mind, and accessing thoughts and ideas beyond the ordinary.”

😯

We all must have one of these rocks!

Interestingly, iolite displays a characteristic called pleochroism — it appears to change color when seen from different angles. The Vikings learned to use the phenomenon, a function of light polarization, to help navigate the oceans on overcast days, when the sun couldn’t be seen through cloud cover.

Reading about the color-shifting trait reminded me of a ring my mother left to me, something that she got during our travels through the Middle East. The stone in it, an alexandrite, is deep amethyst in artificial light and clear aquamarine in sunlight. It’s the strangest thing to see!

Alexandrite allegedly was named after Tsar Alexander the II, having been identified by Finnish mineralogist Nils Gustav Nordenskiöldon the young future monarch’s sixteenth birthday in 1834.

Dunno about you, but I find the science and history related to pretty stone baubles very interesting. The folklore and woo-woo that have built up around them are pretty entertaining, too.

🙂

Amazingly, within a week of the discovery that I can make the things, not one but two people asked to purchase the finely beaded lariat necklaces that you first saw here a few days ago. Not only that, but — hang onto your hats, folks! — a local arts shop agreed to consign as many as I can make.

Can you believe?

Well, Funny about Money readers get first dibs. Here’s the most recent creation, which is looking for a home. It has no religious iconography attached to it, so if you’re in the Voltairean camp, you or your loved one might enjoy this:

As usual, click on the image for a higher-resolution picture.

Here’s how its little bangles look. Remember that they appear larger in these close-up images than they are in real life:

The charm with the treble clef is actually a “message” charm: on the other side it reads “Sing.” The red dangle is from a fairly pricey garnet earring whose partner I lost some time ago.

If you’d like to have this piece for $99.50 plus shipping, please let me know ASAP. As soon as it’s consigned to the shop whose proprietor wishes to sell my little creations, the price will go up another $25 to cover her costs.

To purchase or to reserve future designs,
email me at
funnyaboutmoney{at}gmail.com.

🙂